Pure-tone audiometric data generally forms the basis for hearing device adjustment, said data being captured by the responsible audiologist or hearing device acoustician in the form of a pure-tone audiogram. This data establishes the basis for the calculation of target amplification curves to compensate for the existing hearing loss.
Bone conduction and air conduction hearing thresholds as well as the discomfort threshold are generally captured by pure-tone audiometry. To satisfy the changing requirements to compensate for sound conduction hearing impairments or combined hearing impairments, sound conduction components, i.e. the difference between the air conduction hearing threshold and the bone conduction hearing threshold, are weighted to a significantly greater degree and contribute massively to a changed target amplification curve, as a function of the adjustment strategy selected. Possible mismeasurements or incomplete measurements of bone conduction can thus massively influence the resulting target amplification curves and have a significant negative influence on the spontaneous acceptance of a hearing system.
Furthermore the measurement of the bone conduction is significantly prone to error by virtue of its nature. In the low frequency range, feeling thresholds influence the measurement result and in the high frequency range the result of the measurement depends significantly on the individual position of the bone conduction receiver. The measurement results of a bone conduction measurement are thus of little value and possible errors have a massive influence on the calculation of the target amplification curve.
Patent application EP 0396 831 B1 discloses a method and an apparatus for determining acoustic parameters in a hearing device. In this context the target hearing sensitivity of the user and the transmission function of the hearing device are first determined. A software model of the transmission function is subsequently stored and the acoustic parameters of the hearing device are optimized by comparing the hearing sensitivity of the software model with the target hearing sensitivity and by setting the acoustic parameters, in order to minimize comparison errors.
In practice, errors established in the hearing device setting are manually corrected. If this is not possible in a quick and easy manner, the user often selects another hearing system.